Tuesday, February 06, 2007

Shrub visited Micron Technology (a company which manufactures microns, I presume) to push his proposed budget, and especially tax cuts: “I believe it is not only possible, we have proven it through a document, that by keeping taxes low and being wise about how we spend your money, we actually achieve balance in the budget.” He has proven it through a document, so it must be true.

And the time to do this is now, when the economy is totally perfect in every way. “Three months ago, we’ve added -- over the last three months, we added a million jobs*.” That asterisk was the website people indicating that what he really meant to say was half a million jobs. Any number above 5 is just “a bunch” as far as George is concerned.

And how did we create all those jobs? “It’s all due to the entrepreneurial spirit.” But it’s also all due to tax cuts. And he explained the logic of this persuasively but succinctly: “so there’s a big debate. There’s always somebody -- do tax cuts work? They work.” He then digressed to explain the politics of the issue: “I understand the politics of cutting taxes. Some like it, some don’t.” He then returned to flesh out his already persuasive case for the efficacy of tax cuts: “I just asked the American people to look at the facts. Since we cut taxes a second time in 2003, we’ve added 7.4 million new jobs. Tax cuts equaled new jobs.” See, when one thing follows another thing, the two things equal each other. Quod erat demonstrandum.

Then it was back to the pie metaphor: “we debate the size of the pie. In other words, in order to balance the budget, we need this much top line spending. But a lot of times, we don’t -- it makes it different to deal with the slices of the pie. And I believe there needs to be a process where the President has got the capacity to work with Congress to say well, maybe this slice of the pie doesn’t meet a national priority”. Dude, this is America: pie always meets a national priority. He wants a line-item veto, and to get rid of earmarks. He brought along a visual aid, which he said was all the earmarks. He did not bring any pie.